But Nowak continued to press Mailhot, asking how he could be so sure he never saw the other three women if he couldn’t even identify the women he had taken to his house.
“Is that kind of odd to you?” Nowak asked.
“Yeah, that’s kind of odd,” Mailhot said.
“Well, that’s what we’re looking at. I’m not trying to be an asshole, really. I mean, what we’re trying to do is help you out. We’re trying to get your side of what happened. I mean, it’s a weekend. We could go home, you know what I mean?” Nowak asked. “We’re trying to help you out with what happened. You’ve got a bigger problem than what you’re telling us. It may not be those girls, but you’ve got a bigger problem than what you’re telling us. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah.”
“And eventually, at some point, we’re going to get to the end of this, whether it is today, tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now, forty years from now,” Nowak said.
Nowak told Mailhot that the story was going to be told one way or another and it would be better for him if he told them the story right then.
“I personally think, as does my partner, that the best time to get this whole story out is right now. Especially for you, especially for you. You’re the only one who can benefit by the truth coming out today rather than five years from now, tomorrow, an hour from now, whenever,” Nowak said. “You’re the only one that can benefit. Us—I’ve got another fifteen years before my pension. Whether we find out things about you—you deny things, you admit things—it’s not going to change that fact that in fifteen years I’m going to get my pension.”
“Right.”
Nowak told Mailhot that it was clear he wasn’t telling them the truth. Nowak said the cops didn’t know exactly what Mailhot was holding back, but they were going to find out eventually.
“So it’s you that has to live with all this—whether it’s something to do with those missing girls, something to do with a bigger scope than what you’re telling us, like there are more than five or six girls that this has happened with,” Nowak said. “There’s something more there, because you’re still not being one hundred percent truthful. We don’t know what it is yet. We don’t know if it’s more girls. We don’t know if it’s more girls from other towns—we don’t know anything, but we do know that there’s more to come. You know what I’m saying?”
“Yup.”
“So we’re going to get it eventually,” Nowak repeated. “Like I said, either today or tomorrow, five years from now, forty years from now—it’s gonna come out. The only guy who benefits by getting it out now is you—and for obvious reasons. You know how much better you felt when you just let that little bit out.”
“Right,” Mailhot said, still not willing to give anything up.
“The floodgates are going to open, and when we get to it, the floodgates are going to open and you’re going to feel a thousand times better. We’ve seen people … thank us afterward,” Nowak said. “Do you understand where we’re going with this?”
“Yup.”
“You’re going backward—we’re trying to take you forward and you keep running backward,” Nowak said. “You’ve got to walk with us and get to this common goal. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“All right,” Nowak said.
“Yeah, it’s been more than five or six girls,” Mailhot said.
“How many?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
Mailhot then told the police he had probably been with thirty or so prostitutes over the last ten years—some from Woonsocket, some from other Rhode Island cities, like Providence and Pawtucket. He said most of the time they went back to his place, but sometimes they went to the women’s apartments and other times they just stayed in his car. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the detectives knew they were on the right track.
“How many times has it gotten out of hand?” Nowak asked.
“It’s only gotten out of hand a handful of times.”
“A handful of times?” Nowak repeated.
“Yeah, like probably five or six times.”
“What’s the worst it ever got out of hand?”
“When they passed out.”
As Nowak started to question Mailhot about exactly how many women passed out after he choked them, Lee walked back into the room and sat back down across from Mailhot. The suspect told the detectives that only two women had passed out and they woke up after a couple minutes. But Nowak pressed Mailhot to tell him the rest of the story.
“There is more in there. Come on, guy,” Nowak said.
“This is all because of drinking?” Lee asked.
“This, it all happened, you know, doing the choking, it all happened when I was drinking.”
Mailhot told the cops that he had choked about five or six prostitutes, but only two of them had passed out. He said nothing ever happened with the rest of the women he had been with.
“Every time?” Lee asked.
“Yeah.”
“How many times?”
“Like six.”
“How many passed out?” Nowak asked.
“Two.”
“How many times did you choke them?” Nowak asked.
“Choked two, um, five or six of them.”
“What happened to the forty you just told us you were with?” Nowak continued hammering away at Mailhot.
“Before that, they got away before anything else happened.”
“The one that passed out? It was only two minutes and she got up?” Nowak asked.
“Yup, it was, like, a minute or two and she got up, yeah.”
“How many girls did you put the squeeze on?” Lee asked.
“I think five or six.”
“And how many have you tried to?”
“That was it.”
“How many prostitutes have you picked up and choked?” Nowak asked again, trying to trip Mailhot up.
“About five or six.”
“Altogether?”
“Yes.”
“You just told me not a minute ago that over the last ten years you picked up forty prostitutes and choked them, but only five or six got out of hand.”
“No, I told you I picked up about thirty prostitutes,” Mailhot said. “I didn’t say I choked them all. I said I only choked, like, five or six.”
“And what were the locations?” Lee asked. “Were they all in Woonsocket?”
“Mostly in Woonsocket, a couple in Providence, Pawtucket.”
Lee wanted to know how Mailhot could be so sure he had never seen Harris, Dumont and Goulet, since he had been with so many prostitutes in the past.
“So how the fuck do you know if you’ve never seen these girls before, or never had anything to do with them since you picked up thirty?” Lee asked.
“I don’t know, I just knew.”
“Jeff, come on … we went through the fucking thing,” Nowak said. “Now it’s on you—you want to fucking come out. You’re backing off on it now. Get it out so we can work from here on—where we’re going to go. How we’re going to help you, you know. How you’re going to help yourself. How everybody in your family is going to help you out. Let us know how we’re going to be able to do that. You’ve got to get it out of your mouth as soon as possible. Okay? You’ve got to get it all out. I’m not getting mad or anything. I’m getting a little frustrated because I know you want to let it out. I know—I can see it in your eyes. I know you want the whole story out there. You want to know and you want to get it all off your chest.”
As soon as Nowak stopped badgering Mailhot, Lee jumped right in.
“’Cause you looked at these pictures and—whammo—there was something that bugged you about these right away,” Lee said, adding that Mailhot was too quick to tell police he had never before seen the three women in the photos on the table. “When I put them on the table before, you were telling me that you had never seen them before, and now you’re tellin
g me you’ve been with thirty prostitutes over the last ten years. How the hell are you going to know that you’ve been with these girls? … How do you know I wasn’t showing you pictures of three girls that we know you choked out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then you were saying, ‘Well, I didn’t kill them.’ Who the fuck said anything about killing?” Lee asked.
Mailhot was clearly nervous.
“Because you had asked me if you were gonna find any hairs or any evidence or anything like that.”
Lee explained that he just wanted to know if there was any evidence in Mailhot’s apartment that would indicate that any of the women had ever been in his apartment. Mailhot thought the police were implying something else.
“All right, hypothetically, Jeff, I’m not saying you did this, okay?” Nowak took up where Lee left off. “You say you didn’t kill ’em—we never said they were dead. But for the sake of argument, we’ll say one—one or two of them are dead. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Their bodies are God knows where. All right? Your mother and father died when you were at a young age, right?”
“Yeah.”
Nowak tried playing to whatever sense of compassion Mailhot had.
“You don’t have any kids, though, right?”
“No.”
“So your mother and father were the closest people to you that died?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, and you know that they had proper burials and you know that they were put in the ground, the consecrated ground. I don’t know, are you a religious guy?” Nowak asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you go to church? Are you Catholic?”
“Catholic,” Mailhot answered.
“All right, so you had the final sacrament of burial and all that. Any of these girls that may or may not be dead ain’t got that, and their family don’t have the ability to go to a wake and kneel down in front of the coffin … and say good-bye and will have to live with this for the rest of their lives or until we get to the bottom of this…. These people, for however long it takes, are in the worst agony that you’ve ever imagined. You know, you’ve lived it. Your parents died at a young age. You shouldn’t have been that young when they died. You felt, you know, what these people feel like. Hypothetically, if something happened to these people, don’t you think it’s awfully horrible that these relatives have to go on like this?”
“Yeah.”
“And live that way?”
“If something happened to them, yeah,” Mailhot said, still not ready to admit anything.
“If you did something to them, do you think that it’s going to eat you up—if you did? I’m not asking you if you did. Would it eat you up for the rest of your life?” Lee asked.
“Yes, it would.”
“Where do you think that would leave you?” Lee asked. “Can you ever have a productive life after that? Could you ever have a happy life?”
“If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to have a life. I wouldn’t be able to—that would just consume me. I wouldn’t be able to think or do anything.”
“Exactly, exactly,” Nowak said. “Are you able to have a life now?”
“Yes.”
“After what you’ve done to these other girls?” Lee asked.
“Yes, I mean, I feel bad about what I did and I—” Mailhot said as Nowak got up and walked out of the room.
“Have you ever tried to reach out and apologize or anything like that to any of these girls,” Lee said, having cut Mailhot off in midsentence.
“I didn’t. To be honest with you, I didn’t think that they would want to come near me at all. You know? Which is understandable.”
“Yeah,” Lee responded.
“I mean, I am sorry for what I have done.”
“Like I said … if you did have something to do with these girls, we’re gonna know. We’re definitely gonna know, okay?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“We’re going to find out. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. Do you understand the importance for you?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“What would be important to you? What would be important to tell us if you did it?” Lee asked.
“To just get it out. If I did something like that, I would just want to … get it out. ’Cause like I said, I would not be able to live with myself.”
“And you’ve portrayed the reason why—not that you’re a horrible monster that kills for the sake of killing … [but] there’s something wrong, where you go a little too far and you do your squeeze and it was taken too far on some occasions. I mean, that’s the thing that would be important for you to relay to us. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a frickin’ murderer going to jail for the rest of your life, but someone who just went a little too far. Do you understand?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“You need to relay that to me. You need to get that out, because we’re going to find out, and if you want to be looked at as this horrible monster that does this to people, or someone that just went a little too far for emotional reasons, then that’s what you have to relay to me. Do you understand that?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“And I think you want to tell me that, don’t you?”
“I’m not looking to do anything like that,” Mailhot said.
“Then why are you getting emotional right now? I can tell there’s something bothering you,” Lee said.
An obviously shaken Mailhot said it was because the cops believed he had something to do with the murder of the three prostitutes.
“’Cause basically you guys have it in your head that I have something to do with these girls being missing.”
“You can understand our point of view and why.”
“Yes, I can.”
“You’re playing a dangerous, dangerous game out there with these girls,” Lee said. “Any one of these girls could have ended up dead. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“And you roll the dice like that on five girls, like you said, six girls. Let’s add a few more into the picture—seven, eight, nine. Chances are someone’s not going to get up. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“And I think that happened.”
“I know you do.”
“I know you said you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself or something like that, but I think you’re more afraid of the consequences of what’s going to happen,” Lee said. “Let me tell you something, the consequences of you not telling us what happened are going to be far worse than if we find the evidence, which we will, that they were in your apartment,” Lee said. “This is not some rinky-dink operation here…. Okay?”
“Hm-hmm.”
Lee told Mailhot that the resources of the Woonsocket Police Department, as well as the resources of the Rhode Island State Police (RISP), were going to be put on his case. He said the cops would scour his apartment and his neighborhood and talk to everybody in the area to determine if the three murdered women were ever in his apartment, or if they had ever been in his car. Not talking was only making Mailhot look like a bad, bad person, Lee said.
“And if that’s the path you want to go down, that’s fine. But you just might as well throw your life right down the toilet. Okay? Because there’s no coming back from that if you don’t portray the real Jeff. Okay? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Lee had given it all he had. He held his breath, waiting to see what Mailhot was going to do.
Chapter 9
Lee’s heart was beating out of his chest. Lee had a feeling Mailhot was just about to spill his guts. Lee could hardly breathe. His heart had never pounded so fast in his life. He had a lot of adrenaline rushes on the job, but nothing like that, because Ed Lee knew Jeffrey Mailhot had murdered the three women—and he was just about to confess.
Then Lee started telling Mailhot that he knew Jeffrey wasn’t a bad person—it was just that something bad had happened and thi
ngs got out of hand. Mailhot started to nod his head while he was crying, and that’s when the whole room got weird. It was the most surreal moment Lee had ever experienced in his life because he knew Mailhot was going to confess. And he did.
“Do you want to tell me something?” Lee asked, trying like hell to stay calm. “Jeff, your life will be over—over—unless you get this off of your chest. Okay? I know what happened. I know what happened. I know you’re not a bad man. I know you just took it too far. What happened? What happened, Jeff? What happened? You pushed it too far one night, right? Things got out of hand, huh?”
“Yes,” Mailhot said finally, burying his head in his hands and crying.
“All of them?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“All three?” Lee asked, just to be sure.
“All three,” Mailhot responded.
“All right. Good job. Where are they? Where are they, Jeff?”
“Dead.”
Lee was so caught off guard by Mailhot’s confession that he could hardly even think. His head was spinning and his heart was racing. For a split second he thought maybe some of the other cops were playing a joke on him and put Mailhot up to confessing serial murder.
Then Mailhot started to choke up a little and Lee had to keep the pressure on to find out what he had done with the women’s bodies.
“Where are they?” Lee asked, in no way prepared for Mailhot’s response.
“They’re—they’re in garbage bags.”
“Garbage bags, where?”
“I just dumped them in trash containers.”
“Where?”
“All around Woonsocket,” Mailhot said, adding that the women were probably in the landfill at that point.
“Okay, are you going to show us where you put these girls?”
“Yeah.”
As Mailhot talked, Lee was wondering what was going on outside the door. He could have sworn that he heard a celebration in the room where the other cops were watching the interview. He also knew that phone calls were being made to the chief and to the other detectives.
Almost immediately after Mailhot confessed, Lee began to see a change in his personality. It was like a weight had been lifted off Mailhot’s shoulders, and in a strange way he was actually relieved. Mailhot became much more cooperative and free to talk. He was actually very helpful. He didn’t have to watch every word, or remember what he said from one minute to the next, so the police wouldn’t find out what he had done. In a way serial killers want people to know what they did.
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